Links of Interest to Activists

Bits & Pieces from around the web:

Have you ever been tempted to want to expand the federal government with a
new bureaucracy? Lord knows, many people have. But those few libertarian
hold-outs may have finally met the ultimate temptation — the anti-agency
agency:

Of course, the commissions (it will take two, apparently) would be full of
people appointed by the politicians, so I’d be a fool to expect much good
to come out of them, but daydreams are free.

Rahul Mahajan at Empire Notes takes a critical
look at the
U.S. anti-war
movement:

I begin with the observation that criticism of the war has been almost
entirely as a fiasco, a failed and reckless venture, and not as a moral
failure.…

In one breath, one mentions torture by
U.S. troops,
checkpoint killings, the savage destruction of Fallujah, and then in the
next one talks about the great bravery and nobility of the troops that
did it and of one’s complete support for them. Well, such a complete
disjunction between the evil of the enterprise and the nobility of those
who carry it out is just untenable. There is no need to paint the
American soldiers as any more monstrous than the cogs in other monstrous
machines have been. But neither are they any less so.

More important, the way they have conducted themselves and the way that
Iraq has been treated since the regime change doesn’t just reveal
something about the Bush administration. It doesn’t just reveal something
about the military-industrial complex and corporate
CEOs.
It reveals something about American culture and about the deeper morality
of this country and its people.…

The Iraq occupation is a mirror in which to look at this country, and so
far nobody wants to take a serious look.

Zeynep Toufe of
Under the Same Sunexamines the implications of a recent claim by a
U.S. General
that “U.S. and
Iraqi forces have killed or arrested more than 50,000 Iraqi insurgents in
the past seven months.”

And here’s a little something for the “harm reduction” advocates. Alcohol
prohibition finally ended in December 2003
in Athens, Tennessee — one of those freakish “dry town” hold-outs in our
nation’s noble experiment. Well, when you keep an experiment going that
long, you’re bound to pick up
a
few data points along the way. For instance:

According to court records, Athens police made one less misdemeanor
driving under the influence arrest in 2004
than in 2003. The Sheriff’s Department and
troopers made 37 fewer
DUI
arrests last year. That figure includes Athens police’s felony arrests.

Driving under the influence includes alcohol and drugs.

The city’s numbers are not staggering, but Athens police
Capt. Marty Bruce said he
sees an impact.

On the weekends since Athens went wet, police typically arrest two to
three drivers for DUI, Bruce said.

“Before, it was eight to 10 people,” he said.

How did legalizing alcohol cut down on drunk driving? The
Decatur Daily decided to ask a drunk driver for
his opinion:

Kendall Dowell of Athens, who has four
DUIs
on his record, making him a felon, said going wet has kept people from
driving to Huntsville and Decatur for alcohol.

“It is much easier for people to get the alcohol here, stay home and stay
safe,” Dowell said.

In any society of the future worth talking about and working toward,
independent moral decision will be the dominant cultural habit — the
universal goal and the highest abstract good. So, when it comes to making
a living, here and now, the primary task is to build a pattern of
endeavor which permits that kind of decision — a pattern which, if and as
it is successful, increases the opportunity for that kind of
decision.

In this regard…

We recall the story [of] an eminent engineer whose professional abilities
led him most naturally to municipal employment. This man, who was young
in his career at the time of this episode, realized that municipal
governments are sometimes corrupt. For him, right livelihood meant
foresight in respect to the possibility that he might some day be asked
to participate in dishonest practices, under pressure from the city
fathers. Confronted by this abstract possibility, he laid plans for a
small business of his own, so that he would be economically free, should
he feel morally obliged to resign as city engineer. He was a man with a
wife, two small children, and a mortgage, which made a steady income of
substantial importance. It eventually happened that the small business
was the means of preserving this man’s integrity without harm to his
family.

People sometimes tell me that they admire the stand I’ve taken, and “wish”
they could do such a thing themselves, but for some financial reason or
other, they cannot. Sometimes these reasons are unforseeable and urgent — more often, they’re ordinary but expensive lifestyle choices. It is a rare
person who, like the engineer in the example above, has the foresight to
consider moral autonomy an asset worth valuing as such and worth including
in financial calculations.

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